


i want to give you what you give to me

by outruntheavalanche



Series: all our bits and precious bobs [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Community: tfa_kink, Disillusionment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jedi Finn, M/M, More friendship than relationship, No Healing Cock, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Stormtrooper Culture, bildungsroman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7537612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“It was easier not knowing.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	i want to give you what you give to me

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this one for a long while.
> 
> Written for [this prompt](http://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/1841.html?thread=2022193#cmt2022193) at [](http://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**tfa_kink**](http://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/): **Finn thought that life was perfect and peaceful with the resistance after he escaped from the first order.**
> 
> **He is violently disillusioned when one day poe is raped by a fellow resistance-member. Innocent, sexually inexperienced Finn doesn't really understand what happened, but he can clearly see the effects it had on poe, so he asks someone (leia, rey, jessika, luke,...) about it and they very gently explain what it means to be sexually assaulted.**
> 
> **Finn is appalled and ready to kill the attacker, but first he has to take care of poe and does so in the most finn-like way possible.**
> 
> Title from "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," by The White Stripes.
> 
> Thanks to [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/theladiesyouhate/profile)[**theladiesyouhate**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/theladiesyouhate/) for taking a look at this for me!!! You rock!!
> 
> If you think I've missed something in my tags, please let me know!

Finn can tell immediately that something is off—that something is horribly _wrong_ —the moment he and Rey tumble down the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s landing ramp, Chewbacca bringing up the rear. The Wookiee is huffing grumpily about one thing or the other, prodding Finn gently in the back with the butt end of his bowcaster, when Finn grinds to an abrupt halt and ends up sprawled on the hard ground on his hands and knees because Chewie couldn’t stop himself in time. 

“Finn? Are you okay?” Rey crouches down beside him and offers him her hand, a wry smile playing with the corners of her lips.

Finn sits back on his heels and examines his scraped palms. “I…I don’t think so,” he says, lifting his chin. “Where is everybody?”

They’d been expecting a raucous ‘welcome home’ celebration, or at least Finn had. There’s no one there to greet them on the landing platform just beyond the pilots’ hangars, save the protocol droid, Threepio, and BB-8. Not even Poe is there. 

The place is a literal ghost town.

For a few long minutes, Finn fights off a sickening roil in his stomach. Surely, they’d have been informed if the base was attacked. Right?

“I can sense it too,” Rey says softly, wrapping her hand around Finn’s and tugging him to his feet. She brushes off the dusty front of his jacket. “Maybe Threepio and BB know what’s going on. Perhaps they’re all in a meeting.”

Finn doesn’t think that’s it, but he nods along because he doesn’t want to let himself consider the alternatives.

The three of them approach the waiting droids.

“Master Finn, Lady Rey, how good it is to see you again,” Threepio begins, but Rey holds up a hand to cut him short.

“Where is everyone?” she asks.

Threepio actually bends his body stiffly at the waist, as if to address BB-8. The little astromech tilts its dome up, and the two of them converse conspiratorially in a series of short blats and beeps. 

Finn steps forward. “Wait, that’s not fair. What are you two—”

“Something’s happened,” Rey says, grabbing onto Finn’s hand. “While we were gone.”

“I’d forgotten you speak Binary, Lady Rey,” Threepio says, and has the audacity to sound offended.

“Just tell us what happened. Not knowing is worse than whatever it is you two are keeping from us,” Rey says.

“While you and Master Finn were off training with Jedi Master Luke,” Threepio begins, waving his ugly red arm in the air for emphasis, “something quite terrible happened.”

“Get on with it,” Rey demands.

“Commander Dameron, you see, was—”

“Poe! Poe? Is he all right? Where is he?” Finn flushes with heat like he’s just been slapped in the face, and he reaches out for the droid, but Rey grabs him by the shoulder and tugs him back.

“Commander Dameron is… Oh Maker, I’ve been trained to speak over six billion languages—even dead ones!—but I wasn’t trained for anything like this,” Threepio laments, flailing his arms. “Commander Dameron was hurt on base. This happened several weeks ago. He’s been in the medbay, recovering.”

“He’s hurt? And no one thought to tell us?” Finn yells.

Chewie growls threateningly at Threepio; Finn hasn’t quite got the hang of Wookieespeak down, but it’s probably something like ‘Just tell us what the kriff is going on.’

“General Organa did not wish to…burden you with the awful, awful news,” Threepio says, managing to somehow sound mournful. “Both she and Jedi Master Luke agreed it was best to tell you when you returned to base.”

The sickening pit of dread that opens up in Finn’s stomach is a cool sweep, like the roiling blue oceans of Ahch-To. The tides threaten to drag him under, but he just squeezes on Rey’s hand and anchors himself to her. He can feel her soft, warm presence curling around him, bolstering him.

“Can we see him?” Rey asks.

“I’m afraid he hasn’t been taking many visitors,” the droid says. “No one but General Organa has been allowed to see him since, since… Ah, well, since the incident occurred. Not even little BB-8!”

“He’ll see us,” Finn insists, tightening his grip on Rey’s hand to keep from lashing out at Threepio and throttling him until his stupid, shiny golden head pops off. 

Killing the messenger would probably be frowned upon, and it’s not Threepio’s fault he had to be the bearer of bad news. Finn’s really got to get ahold of himself now, and pull himself back together. If not for his sake, then for Rey’s and Poe’s.

Threepio frets. “I don’t think—”

“Take us to see him,” Rey says calmly, so calmly Finn wonders if she’s trying to use mind control on the droid.

Threepio makes a chuffing noise that sounds a lot like a sigh. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The three of them follow Threepio and BB-8 to the medbay.

***

When they get to the medbay, General Organa is conversing with a medidroid in the hallway, a tight expression pinching at the corners of her mouth and eyes. The General’s face softens when she sees them approaching, and she waves the droid off.

“Rey, Finn,” she greets them, pulling both of them against her chest in an unexpected embrace. “How was your trip back?”

“It was fine, General,” Finn says, extricating himself gently to look her right in the eyes. 

Finn knows the General’s eyes have seen countless battles, loved ones lost, death and destruction, but he doesn't think he’s ever seen her look this…this sad. He hadn’t been conscious when he was brought back to the base after Starkiller, so he hadn’t seen the grief in her eyes for Han, but he imagines that pain looked a lot like this.

“What happened to Poe?” Rey slices through Finn’s thoughts like a lightsaber, cutting right to the quick. He appreciates that about her, among other things. “Threepio wouldn’t tell us a thing.”

General Organa sighs and shakes her head. “A few weeks ago, Commander D—Poe was assaulted on-base. .”

“ _Assault_?” Rey’s spine stiffens and her tone grows brittle. “Oh, no. You don’t mean—”

General Organa nods, eyes glossing over with what appear to be tears, and Finn looks frantically between the two women. He feels like he’s missed out on something vital here. Like he’s only getting part of the puzzle.

“Yes,” Organa says, drawing in a deep, shaky breath. “Poe… He was raped. He suffered serious enough injuries that he’s been recovering in the medbay since. He’s been temporarily grounded until the doctor officially discharges him.”

Finn goes cold all over, goosebumps raising on his flesh under his warm cloak. In the First Order, they had no tolerance for rape; it was probably one of the only forms of assault Finn’s former superiors looked down on. If a ’trooper was caught in the act of rape, they were immediately decommissioned and tossed out of the airlock without so much as a trial. 

_Only scum, rebel scum, Resistance scum_ , General Hux’s ravings echo in Finn’s mind, _would resort to such tactics. We have no use for that here._

How could something like this—something so vile the kriffing _First Order_ frowned upon it—happen on the Resistance base? How could something like this happen to someone as good, someone as kind and generous and loving as _Poe_?

Why hadn’t Finn felt a disturbance in the Force? Why wasn’t he here to stop it? 

“Finn, what’s going through your mind?” Rey asks softly, slipping her hand around his. The sleeve of her robe is coarse against the back of his hand and, oddly, the scratch of the fabric draws him out of his tumultuous thoughts. 

“I need to see Poe,” Finn croaks, throat suddenly as dry as the sands of Jakku. He grips Rey’s hand tightly.

“He hasn’t been taking visitors,” General Organa says, flicking her wet eyes over Finn’s face. “But I will ask for you.”

Finn nods, unable to speak, and swallows past a growing lump in his throat. He doesn't dare try to speak. He is afraid of what might come out of his mouth. Instead, he lets Rey lead him to the medbay’s sterile white waiting room, where a thin, sallow-faced man in a brown uniform jacket—decorated with gleaming medals—sits with a holomag in his lap. 

Finn scrutinizes him, reaches out with the fingers of his mind to probe. Could he be the monster who hurt Poe? He traces an invisible finger along the edges of the man’s mind, tempted to peel back the layers to look inside.

Rey jerks on his hand, pulling him out of the man’s thoughts abruptly. “Don’t,” she warns, curling closer into Finn’s side. “There will be time for that later.”

Finn pulls his hand free and rubs over his face. “I should have felt something,” he says into his palms. “I should have been able to feel it. Maybe I could have—”

“There’s nothing we could have done, Finn,” Rey says. “We’re both so new to this. When Starkiller blew, I hardly felt a ripple in the Force.”

Finn squeezes hands over his face hard enough that he sees bright red and yellow stars burst behind his eyelids. “That was different. They were your—our enemies. This is _Poe_.” 

Rey rests her cheek against Finn’s shoulder. She reaches for his hand again and turns it over in her lap, palm facing upward. “I’ll ask Master Luke for advice,” she says, tracing her fingertips over the lines on Finn’s palm. “He’ll know how to help Poe.”

“He won’t let Luke go into his mind,” Finn says, glancing down at their hands. He watches his fingers twitch, detachedly, as if from outside his body. “You know what Kylo Ren did to him on the _Finalizer_.”

“But Luke could—”

“No, I—we can’t ask him to go through that again,” Finn says firmly. “What could Luke even do? We don't even know the shape Poe is in.”

The doors leading to the medbay open with a soft exhale and General Organa emerges, her mouth thinned into a grim line. Doctor Kalonia follows, looking equally as dour.

“He’s asked to see Finn first,” the General says, offering Rey a small, apologetic smile. 

Finn nods and jumps to his feet. He’s full of nervous energy now, and all he really wants to do is race into Poe’s room and throw himself into a full-body hug. He manages to not do that.

“Let’s do this,” Finn says. He glances down at Rey and pauses for a moment before slipping his robe off his shoulders and offering it out to her. “Hold onto this for me.”

Rey takes the robe and folds it against her chest. “I’ll be out here when you’re done,” she says.

Finn takes a few steps toward the medbay before stopping and turning, tipping his chin up to Rey. He stands up a little straighter, hopes he looks as confident and calm as he wishes he felt.

“Thank you,” he says, and then slips past General Organa and Doctor Kalonia for Poe’s room.

***

Finn leans in the doorway of Poe’s room and just watches, silently, as a fleet of efficient medidroids tends to him. One of the droids, a stocky, box-shaped thing, changes the bacta-bandages wrapped around Poe’s midsection and replaces them with a fresh set. Another helps Poe to sit up in his bed and unties the fastenings of his medbay gown with its claw-like pincers. 

The gown slips form his shoulders and Finn fights off a wave of nausea that tightens its grip around his throat and threatens to overpower him. Poe’s bare back is a mess of deep purple bruises and scraped-raw skin. The droid changes the dressings on his back, replacing them with fresh bandages, and helps Poe slip his arms back into the sleeves of his gown. 

Once they’re done, the droids file out of the room and shut the door behind them to give Finn and Poe a little privacy.

“Hey, buddy,” Poe rasps, sounding like he swallowed a bucket of nails.

“How are you?” Finn asks, shoving his shaky, suddenly clammy hands in the pockets of his jacket.

It’s a stupid question, but Finn can’t think of anything else to say. 

What he _really_ wants to say is, ‘I’m going to find whoever did this to you and show them what a stormtrooper’s capable of,’ but he doesn't think that would go over well with _anyone_ , least of all Poe, who bristles defensively anytime someone so much as hints to Finn’s stormtrooper past.

“I’ve been better,” Poe says, settling back in his bed with a grimace. He tries to smile, but ends up pulling at the stitches in his lip. Poe clenches his hands in fists for a moment, before opening them and relaxing his fingers. “I guess they told you what happened?”

“Got the gist,” Finn says, pushing himself away from the wall and approaching Poe’s bed slowly. “General Organa filled me and Rey in after we got back from Ahch-To.”

Poe sighs and closes his eyes. Finn notices the wetness on his cheeks and something twists painfully in his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“What are _you_ sorry for?” Finn asks, appalled that Poe apparently thinks there are things he ought to be apologizing to him for.

Poe blinks his eyes open wearily. “I…I don’t know,” he says, turning his head away from Finn toward the blank white wall. Poe looks thoughtful, like he has something more he wants to say and just can’t quite get it out.

Finn looks around, gaze settling on a small stool, which he drags over to the side of Poe’s bed. It scrapes across the tiled floor and Poe flinches at the sound, but tries to hide it with a shrug. Finn offers him an apologetic smile, tries not to let it bother himself too much that Poe can’t seem to bring himself to smile back.

“So, um,” he says, sitting next to the bed and holding out his hand. He bounces his foot anxiously. “Can I… Can I hold your hand? Or would that be weird?”

Poe does manage a smile this time, one that almost makes it to his eyes, and reaches out, wrapping his fingers loosely around Finn’s. “Not weird.”

“Okay. Good. That’s good. Not weird is good.” Finn knows he’s rambling now, but he’s nervous. He doesn’t know how to comfort people, not really. Certainly not with words. 

When Rey woke up their first night together on Ahch-To with Master Luke, quaking with terror over some half-remembered dream, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, he took her in his arms and rubbed her back. Grasped her hand in his and let her anchor herself to him. 

He wants so badly to hug Poe, but he just doesn’t know. Doesn’t know if Poe is ready for that. Doesn’t know if _he’s_ ready for that.

So Finn turns Poe’s hand over in his until the palm is facing up, and traces his fingertips over his lifelines as Rey had done for him. It had comforted him; he hopes he can bring some sliver of comfort to Poe.

When he raises his head, Poe’s eyes are on their hands, following the movements of Finn’s fingers. For a moment, Finn panics, wonders if he’s making Poe uncomfortable.

“It’s fine,” Poe says, so quietly Finn can hardly hear him. “It’s… You’re good, Finn. You’re good.”

Finn laughs and it catches in his throat, and he realizes, with a faint prick of shame, that he’s started crying. He rubs at his burning eyes with the bottom of the dust-covered shirt he hadn’t bothered to change from, which only makes things worse. A painful wound opens in his chest, cuts deep like the jagged scar Kylo Ren dealt him on Starkiller. 

He feels Poe’s hand find his back, parallel to his scar, and start rubbing in small circles.

Finn can’t fathom why he’s crying. This didn’t happen to _him_ , he wasn’t the one who—who was—

Finn had wanted so badly to be strong for Poe, someone solid that Poe could lean on. And here he is, forcing Poe to comfort _him_. As if he’s the one who really needs it.

Rather than dry Finn’s shameful tears, Poe’s attempts at comfort just make him cry even harder. 

“I, I’m sorry,” he stammers, tugging away from Poe to rub his hands over his face. He forces out an awkward little sob of a laugh. “I’m sorry. Better get ahold of myself before I drown us both, huh?”

Poe sighs. “It’s okay, Finn.”

“It’s not okay. You need me to be—”

“I just need you to be here. And you are,” Poe says.

Finn drops his hands and looks at Poe through his tears. “But this isn’t about me. This happened to _you_ and I should’ve been here and I wasn't, I shouldn't be—”

The corner of Poe’s mouth quirks up. “What you’re experiencing is commonly known as compassion. Sympathy. Which you seem to possess loads of, much to the consternation of the First Order,” he says dryly.

Finn sniffles miserably and wipes his nose on his jacket sleeve, which is a terrible miscalculation. He just ends up smearing tears and snot all over, which causes Poe to laugh hard enough that he splits another stitch in his lip. Poe plucks a tissue from a box on the table beside his bed and holds it out to Finn, who gratefully cleans himself up.

“Feeling better?” Poe asks, which Finn still finds ridiculous because, _hello_. Finn’s not the one who’s been laid up in then medbay in a thin gown, bruises, cuts, scrapes, and stitches covering nearly every inch of his body.

He’s not the one who had something violently taken from him. Not this time. 

“Yeah,” he says, sliding his hand back over Poe’s slowly, slow enough to give Poe a chance to pull away if he wants.

Poe doesn’t say anything. And he doesn't pull his hand away.

***

Though Finn and Rey both get their own rooms on the base—one of the many perks of being connected to Master Luke and, therefore, also connected to General Organa, apparently—Finn bunks with Rey in her room that night.

Honestly, if he’d had a say in the matter, he’d probably have just grabbed a chair and just slept beside Poe’s bed in the medbay. Rey points out that it’ll be bad for his still-mending back, though—and she does have a point—and asks him to stay with her instead. Her room is closer to the medbay than Finn’s, anyway.

Rey insists that Finn take the bed, on account of his back, so he sits on the mattress and watches her as she spreads a blanket out on the floor. He feels a twinge of guilt that he pushes down. 

“You know, we could share the bed,” he tells her, legs dangling off the edge. He scuffs his heels against the soft carpeting.

Rey darts in behind him and grabs a pillow from under his back. “How did you do it back with the First Order?” she asks, ignoring his offer, instead holding the pillow against her chest. “Did you have barracks? Or rooms of your own?”

Finn shrugs and reclines, gently, against a soft mound of pillows, careful to leave just enough space for Rey to squeeze in next to him if she wants. “We didn’t really sleep,” he says. “We had to stay alert at most times, so we just… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Even when we were technically sleeping, it always felt like I was, on some level, fully conscious.”

Rey nods, then glances down at her blanket and pillow. “I never had anybody to sleep with, besides this doll I made myself out of straw and bits of an old pilot’s uniform I scavenged from a wreck. I called her Dosmit.”

Finn looks at her. She’s sitting cross-legged on the blanket, silhouetted in the dark, hands resting in her lap. He’d grown up surrounded by other people—other stormtroopers, superior officers who looked at him with either contempt or disappointment—he was never allowed to know. Certainly not on an intimate level. Rey too had grown up profoundly alone, with only a hand-stitched doll as her company. 

He pats the empty space next to him and Rey slides in beside him without a word.

Finn loops an arm around her shoulders and closes his eyes, sighing deeply.

He thinks of Poe, alone too, in that sterile medbay room, with no one but a droid to keep him company. Poe who lost his mother at such a young age, and left his family home when he was hardly older than Rey to enlist in the New Republic Starfleet.

He thinks of Poe. Scared. Injured. Bleeding and alone.

“Your thoughts are very loud tonight,” Rey says, burrowing against his chest and tucking her head into the space where his neck and shoulder meet. 

“Sorry,” he mutters against the top of her head.

“You don’t have to apologize. It doesn’t bother me… Maybe you’d like to talk about it,” she says. “About Poe.”

“You hardly know him,” Finn says. 

It’s not an accusation; it’s simply a fact. Poe and Rey had only exchanged a handful of words—friendly words, surely, because neither Poe nor Rey were anything but friendly—before Rey went off to Ahch-To to train with Master Luke. A few weeks later, Finn woke from his coma and went to join her.

“You’re right, I don’t know him very well. But he’s your friend, and you’re _my_ friend. And I hope, once he’s out of the medbay, he and I can become friends too,” Rey says.

Finn tightens his arm around her shoulders and squeezes his eyes shut hard. For the second time that day, his eyes itch with tears he tries not to shed.

“I don’t know how I got so lucky,” Finn mumbles. “Really lucked out on the whole ‘friend’ thing.”

“If you did, then so did I. So did Poe,” Rey says.

Finn sighs deeply, and breathes in the clean, vaguely soapy scent of her hair. “Maybe…maybe tomorrow they’ll let us see Poe together,” he says.

“Maybe,” Rey agrees.

He closes his eyes and, for the first time in what seems like years, he’s at peace. Finn tumbles headlong into a thankfully dreamless sleep shortly after.

***

A few days later, Poe’s well enough to be discharged from the medbay.

Finn volunteers himself to help Poe to his room, and tries his best to act like it doesn't bother him when Poe clutches a little too tightly on his arm, or barely manages to conceal a pained whimper when Finn accidentally jostles him in his side with his elbow. He’s not sure if he succeeds.

It’s not that Finn is upset on his own behalf, and it’s not that he’s inconvenienced or anything like that. Rather, every time Poe’s breath catches in a painful hitch because Finn’s accidentally brushed his hand against a tender spot on his back or side, every time Poe’s knees buckle, just a little bit, from the pain, Finn’s stomach ties itself into knots. 

He’s left alternating between wanting to comfort Poe, smooth away the worry line that forms between his eyebrows, and wanting to lash out. Wanting to find the person who did this to Poe and rend them limb from limb. 

_I could do it_ , Finn thinks grimly, as he lets them into Poe’s room, _I could tear that monster apart with only my hands. And then Rey would help me hide the body parts. Maybe we’d go back to Jakku. Bury it in the sand where no one would ever think to look for it._

“What’s on your mind, buddy?” Poe’s voice is suddenly close to Finn’s ear, breathy, winded, _hurt_.

Finn manages to shove him into the room—gently—and close the door behind them with the heel of his boot, all without taking his hands off Poe’s shoulders. 

“Nothing,” he lies. “Lights on.”

Poe’s room is instantly bathed in a warm, golden glow. 

Finn notes the thin layer of dust that covers everything, from the little X-Wing models on Poe’s bookshelves to BB-8’s charger port next to Poe’s bed to the bed itself, its sheets still rumpled, the coverlet and sheets in a twisted lump at the foot of the bed. 

Poe lets out a breath in a sharp whistle, and Finn stiffens beside him. His eyes linger on the sheets. He feels Poe practically vibrating out of his skin next to him.

“Poe? Are you—”

“Would you mind…helping me with this?” Poe asks, squeezing gently on Finn’s shoulder.

“Anything,” Finn says without thinking, like helping Poe has been hardwired into him. But maybe it has. 

“I haven’t been here since the, uh… The incident,” Poe stammers, letting his hand slip away from Finn’s shoulder. He gestures to the bed and the tangled covers. “The sheets need to… Ah. You know what, I can just ask Threepio to help me with this inst—”

Understanding slices through him like a lightsaber blade cutting through tendons, muscle, and bone.

“No, no. It’s fine,” Finn says, his stomach filling with ice. 

For a moment, he feels like he’s back on Starkiller Base in the snow, face and eyes stinging from the cold. Rey lying motionless against the base of a great tree. Kylo Ren waiting in the shadows for him. Static fills his mind, and red dances at the edges of his peripheral vision before Finn shakes his head, once, to chase the memories away.

Finn draws in a steadying breath, strides forward and grabs the sheets and coverlet, bundling them in his arms. “I’ll take this to… There’s gotta be a trash compactor around here somewhere,” he says, glancing sidelong at Poe.

Poe turns toward him, looks at him full-on with such tenderness and gratitude that it makes Finn’s heart clench in his chest like a fist.

“Appreciate it,” Poe says, though it comes out more like a sigh.

Finn musters up a smile for Poe, and goes to dispose of the bedsheets.

***

When Finn lets himself back into Poe’s room, a short while later, Poe is sitting against the wall, taking in shallow, shaky breaths. His legs are drawn up to his chest and his forehead is pressed into his knees. Finn’s stomach drops straight down like a heavy, sinking stone.

“Poe?” Finn lets the door whoosh shut behind him and he’s at Poe’s side in an instant. He reaches out for him, hesitating for a moment, hand hovering over Poe’s trembling shoulder.

Poe lifts his head and offers Finn a wavering smile. He has creases on his forehead from the wrinkles on his trousers. “Sorry. I’m good,” he says, shakily, an obvious lie that Finn chooses to let slide.

Finn brushes his fingertips lightly over Poe’s shoulder before letting his arm drop against his side. “Uh, do you need anything? Like, water or something to eat? Um, do you wanna lie down?” 

Poe shakes his head and shoves his hands through his curls. “No. I just… I’m fine. I bet you and Rey have training you should be doing. You don’t need to stay with me,” he says. He sits back heavily and tilts his head back until it bangs against the wall.

Finn falls back on his haunches in front of Poe and rests his hands on his thighs. “We won’t be picking up the rest of our training until Master Luke arrives from Ahch-To,” he explains. “We came separately, just in case the First Order was tracking us. He should be arriving in a few days, so I’m completely free until then.”

Poe looks at Finn, a sad little imitation of smile creeping onto his face, as if he hadn’t wanted to hear that. Did he not _want_ Finn around? 

Considering everything that Poe’s been through in such a short span of time, Finn can’t blame him for wanting to be alone, but still. The thought of Poe here in this room, alone, makes something in Finn’s chest twinge. Maybe Poe wouldn’t mind coming to bunk with Finn for a little while—

But, again, it’s not about Finn. Not this time. He’s gotta respect Poe’s wishes.

“If you—if you wanna be alone, that’s cool too, that’s totally cool,” Finn says, flashing at Poe what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do.”

A muscle in Poe’s cheek twitches, minutely. “Look,” he says, gently. He splays a hand over the nubby gray carpet. “ _Look_ ,” he says again, drawing in a deep—weary, resigned—breath. “You don’t have to take care of me, Finn. It’s not your responsibility. _I’m_ not—”

“You’re my friend,” Finn can’t help but interrupt. “And—and I’m sorry, and…I don’t know. I just want to help.”

“You don’t have to put your life on hold,” Poe says, not looking at Finn. He drags his fingers through the carpet’s rough pile and it makes this scratching sound that sends a shiver down Finn’s back. 

“I’m not, though,” Finn says, gripping his knees until his fingers are digging in painfully. “I won’t. I promise. When Master Luke shows up to kick off the next phase of his Jedi training program, you probably won’t see much of me. But he’s not here yet. And something is telling me this is where I’m supposed to be right now.”

Finn wants to just make everything right _so badly_ , and he doesn’t know where to even begin. Doesn’t know if it’s even _possible_ for him to right so many wrongs. If the Force could just give him a sign—kriff, if the Force could just fix things for him, that’d be great. But that’s not how the Force works.

He might be training to become a Jedi, but he’s still just learning his place in this world, learning where he slots in with the Resistance. Where he slots into Poe’s life. 

Poe looks at Finn, searching for _something_ , though Finn isn’t sure what he’s looking for. Finn can’t help but map the bruises and scrapes on the side of Poe’s face, deep red and purple marks that are finally beginning to fade. His eyes trace the bloody seam in Poe’s bottom lip, skim over the yellowing marks at his collarbone and neck where his shirt’s slipped down a little bit.

Finn’s stomach lurches and if he’d eaten lunch he probably would have lost it then. Right there on Poe’s ugly gray carpet.

“Finn,” Poe says. The way he says his name is all wrong. It sounds wounded.

“If the person who did this is still—still here. Still alive and breathing, and you’d like them to not be alive and breathing,” Finn says to the empty space between them, not quite sure exactly what he’s offering. “Just ask. And I’ll do it. I’ll take care of it. I can be quiet and efficient. No one will have to know.”

“ _Finn_ ,” Poe says.

“Just ask,” he says again.

“I _won’t_ ,” Poe says fervently. He sounds like he does when he’s about to go off on a passionate speech about the Resistance or General Organa or how much he loves flying. Right now, Finn thinks he’d do anything Poe asked of him. “I will never ask anything like that of you. _Never_.”

Finn nods, lifts his eyes to Poe’s, nods again. “Okay.”

It feels like the air’s been sucked out of the room, into the vacuum of space. 

Poe just sits there and breathes loudly for a few moments. Finn paces his own breaths to Poe’s. 

Then: “I’m kriffin’ starving. You?”

“I haven’t eaten anything all day,” Finn admits, mostly to his hands, which are back on his knees, clenching hard enough that they ache. He lets go, flexes some feeling back into his aching fingers. 

“Then let’s go.” Poe pushes himself carefully to his feet and holds a hand out to Finn.

Finn looks at his hand, at the lines on his palm, before lacing their fingers together and letting Poe help him to his feet.

***

_Finn’s back on Starkiller Base, on his hands and knees in the snow, and that’s his first clue that this is a dream._

_The second clue is that Poe’s there too, unconscious, sprawled on his back next to Finn._

_There’s a trail of bright red blood—as bright and red as Kylo Ren’s lightsaber—that twists and winds through the otherwise immaculate white snow._

_Finn manages to push himself up onto his knees. When he makes an attempt to get to his feet, his legs buckle and he collapses back on his hands and knees. “Poe._ Poe _.”_

_He tries to crawl closer, but suddenly he’s frozen in place. Finn tries desperately to lift a hand, to reach out and touch Poe, to reassure him that he’s not alone, but something’s not connecting. The impulses aren’t getting from Finn’s brain to his hand._

_Dangerous, crackling energy hums all around him and he tries to move toward the sound, but he can’t. And now, he realizes why he can’t._

_Red flashes at the edge of his line of sight. Suddenly, the tight grip on his muscles loosens, and Finn manages to turn just in time to see Kylo bring his lightsaber blade down._

_Poe doesn’t make a sound._

Finn jerks awake, a silent scream dying in his throat, arms and legs flailing. He manages to fall out of the bed and land in a tangled heap on the floor, Rey’s comforter twisted around his legs. 

She sits up slowly and peers down at him for a moment before offering him her hand. “Nightmare, huh.” 

Finn accepts her hand and she hauls him back into bed. He carefully extracts himself from the comforter and smoothes his hands over it. “I—I dreamt about Poe.”

Rey squeezes his shoulder gently. “Would you…mind talking about it? It might help you to sort it out,” she says, “but if you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”

Finn grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. “We were back on Starkiller,” he says. His throat is raw, as if he’d spent the last few hours screaming in his sleep. “Kylo Ren was there, and… I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t help Poe.”

Rey rubs her hand in slow, soothing circles on Finn’s back. “Finn,” she starts, but he shakes his head.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Worse than getting cut down by Ren on Starkiller. I was scared then, sure. But this was a hundred—no, a thousand times worse.” Finn rubs his hands over his face. He’s only vaguely aware of Rey pressing her cheek against his shoulder.

“It wasn’t real,” she whispers.

“I should have—”

“There’s nothing we could have done, Finn.”

Her reassurances only make him angry—though not with Rey—and he doesn’t know why. Logically, somewhere deep inside, Finn even knows that Rey is right. The knowledge doesn't make him feel any better though. It doesn’t make him feel any less guilty.

“He needed me. I should have been able to _feel_ that,” Finn says. Tears sting his eyes, threaten to spill over, and Finn’s mortified. He clutches the comforter in his hands and twists until he hears stitches pop. “What kind of Jedi am I, that I can’t even feel when someone I—I care about is in pain?”

Rey sighs, her breath warm against the side of his neck, but she doesn’t try to reassure him this time. He appreciates that she’s decided to let him be, for now. She just presses her cheek back against his shoulder and gets an arm around his waist.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“What are _you_ sorry for?” Finn asks, rubbing idly on her arm. The conversation he had with Poe in the medbay echoes in his mind. 

“That I can’t make this better for you. That I can’t make this better for Poe.” She sighs again. “Master Luke will be here in a couple days. He might know what to do.”

Finn lets go of Rey and settles back in bed. He stares up at the ceiling and listens to her quiet breathing. “I don’t think I can get back to sleep tonight,” he admits. “I think I’m gonna go check in on Poe… If it’s okay with you, I mean. I think—”

“It’s fine,” she tells him, stealing away the covers and burrowing under them. “I’m sure Poe’s not getting much sleep, himself. Go.”

“You’ll be all right?” he asks, sitting up beside her.

Rey rolls onto her stomach and pulls a pillow under her chin. “I’ll be all right.”

Finn gets out of bed, slides his feet into a pair of slippers, and pads down the corridor for Poe’s room.

***

The second Poe opens his bedroom door to Finn and ushers him in without a word—just a slow, tired sweep of his arm—Finn comes to the sinking realization that he hasn’t interrupted Poe’s sleep, or anything close to it. Judging by the dark rings around Poe’s eyes, he hasn’t been able to sleep for some time.

Poe turns his back on Finn, mumbling half-hearted apologies about the sloppy state of his quarters. There’s a mound of dirty, grease-stained flightsuits, vests, and boots piled on a bed Poe clearly hasn’t been sleeping in, stacks of dirty plates and half-empty cups of what Finn hopes is caf left on a grimy counter, and crinkled flimsi food wrappers and containers left on every available surface.

Finn shuts the door quietly behind him and takes in the state of disarray with a soft sigh.

“Poe,” Finn starts, staring at the center of his back.

“I know, I know,” Poe says, lifting a hand, waving off Finn’s protest before he can even begin to voice it. “I wasn’t expecting any guests.”

He turns back to Finn and offers him an empty-eyed smile. It hurts Finn to see it.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Finn asks.

Poe dips his head and sweeps a hand through his unwashed curls. He huffs out a breathy laugh before lifting his head and looking Finn directly in the eyes. Finn finds himself straightening his posture, lifting his chin, clicking his heels together out of habit. Poe’s shoulders deflate a little at that.

“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” he says, and it strikes Finn that, rather than try to dissuade him from helping, like he did earlier, Poe is being honest with him now.

Finn crosses his arms over his chest and scuffs the sole of his slipper on the carpet, which sounds different under his foot, not as rough and scratchy. He looks down and realizes Poe’s replaced—had someone else replace?—the old coarse gray carpet with something softer. He hazards a glance at Poe’s bed; as he suspects, it’s a completely new durasteel bedframe.

“I want to at least get a chance to try and help,” Finn says, swallowing past a lump in his throat that presses painfully on his Adam’s apple. 

The unwelcome pressure reminds him a bit of his stormtrooper helmet, and how it squeezed uncomfortably on his throat sometimes. Finn’s heart aches in his chest and his palms grow slick with sweat all of a sudden. He wipes them off on his cotton sleep pants.

Poe turns and leans back against the footboard of his bed. His dark gaze is penetrating and it makes Finn feel itchy and squirmy in his own skin, as if Poe is looking through him, right into his heart. 

“This isn’t your mess to fix, Finn,” Poe says. His voice sounds as scraped raw as the discolored, scabby skin on the side of his face.

“You’re not a mess,” Finn says, because it seems like the right thing to say. Because Poe isn’t a mess. Because Poe is his friend and he’s hurting and someone should at least try to help. 

Finn moves closer, reaches out tentatively to touch his fingertips against the back of Poe’s hand, which rests limply against his thigh. Poe doesn't finch or move away, so Finn strokes his thumb gently over the knob of Poe’s wristbone. 

He notices some marks, some strafing there on Poe’s wrist and he feels, for a moment, that he might get sick all over Poe’s new carpet. But he doesn’t, and he’s proud of himself for that. Proud of himself for managing to put his own discomfort aside for Poe’s sake.

Finn curls his fingers around Poe’s wrist, keeping his grip loose should Poe want to pull away.

Poe sighs and he’s right _there_ , his warm breath puffing against Finn’s neck, and Finn hadn’t realized he’d closed that much distance between them. He’d just been focused on touching, bringing some comfort if he could. Poe hasn’t pushed him away, but he hasn’t pulled him closer either.

Finn holds himself very still now, fingers still loose around Poe’s wrist. 

Back in the early days, when he was still in training, Finn had tried to comfort his fellow ’troopers when he could, when Phasma wasn't on the prowl. It didn’t always go well. Sometimes he’d get slugged for his efforts—his left ear still rings sometimes, thanks to the butt-end of a blaster—and sometimes he’d be laughed at or pushed away. 

Sometimes he’d get caught. He still has scars on the soles of his feet from the time Hux caught him consoling Slip after a poor showing at the shooting range. Hux was always more brutal than Phasma in doling out punishment for indiscretions, something about making an example of the offenders for their fellow stormtroopers’ sakes. Phasma seemed content to just stare you down from behind her impassive chromium mask, communicating all her anger, resentment, and bone-deep disappointment with a mere tilt of the head and cock of the hip before sending you on your way.

The only one in his unit who didn’t lash out or push him away or report on him to Phasma or Hux was Slip, really. Slip wasn’t exactly _friendly_ , but Finn never took the butt-end of his blaster to the face, so he figured that had to count for _something_.

He must be doing something right, now, anyway, because Poe’s breathing has slowed. It’s no longer blowing against his neck in quick, panicky puffs.

Poe dips his head and his stiff, disheveled curls brush coarsely against Finn’s jawline. 

“I—I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Poe says, his flat tone sending a cold spike of _something_ down Finn’s back, between his shoulder blades, lower to the base of his spine. “But Finn, you don’t have to do this because you feel like—like you owe me. Like you’re obligated to.”

Finn steps back a little, pulling his hand away from Poe’s wrist, and grips him by the shoulders. “Look at me, Poe,” he says. Poe’s staring resolutely at the ground and Finn gives him a gentle shake. When Poe meets his eyes, Finn continues. “You’re right. I don’t owe you my friendship. I don’t owe you anything.”

Poe’s expression goes carefully blank. Finn doesn't like that look on his face, wishes he could use his fingers to smooth out the crease forming between Poe’s brows. Wishes he could cup Poe’s face in his hands and kiss the frown off his mouth. But that’s not what Poe needs right now. More than anything, Poe needs a friend, someone who will just listen. Finn tucks that prickly urge away somewhere at the back of his mind, to be examined at a later date.

“Poe.” Finn stops, closes his eyes briefly, takes a breath before soldiering on. “What I’m saying is… I’m not offering because I feel like I owe you for—for helping me escape in a stolen TIE or giving me a jacket or a nickname or whatever. I’m offering because I care about you.”

“I don’t want to add on to what you’re already dealing with,” Poe protests, reaching up to slide his rough palms over Finn’s hands on his shoulders. His eyes are glassy and rimmed with red but his cheeks are completely dry and his breath hitches and his hands tremble lightly over Finn’s. Finn wonders how much it’s costing Poe right now to not let himself cry. “You got lightsabered in the back by kriffing Kylo Ren less than half a year ago, went through months of grueling physical therapy, started training to be a Jedi… You’ve got more than enough on your plate already. You don’t need to add to it by babysitting a headcase.”

“You’re trying to push me away,” Finn says.

“I’m not, I swear. I just don’t want you to do anything you’ll end up regretting later.” Poe sighs and close his eyes again. “I don’t want to take you away from what you should be doing.”

“What should I be doing?” Finn asks.

“Training with Luke. Being… Kriff, Finn, being a kid. Just being a twenty-three year old kid with the entire universe at his fingertips. Being with Rey,” Poe says, opening his eyes slowly, like Finn’s just roused him out of a deep, deep slumber.

“I can do all that _and_ help you too,” Finn says, firmly. He stands up a little taller—ignores the tight pull of skin where his scar is—and holds his head high. The way he used to when Phasma came by to inspect his unit. “I’m not gonna stretch myself too thin, or whatever it is you’re worried about.”

Poe sighs again. “Should’ve figured you wouldn't budge on this,” he says, quirking the corner of his mouth. “But you really should go back to your quarters. Rey’s probably worried about you.”

“I told her I was coming to see you,” Finn says. “She’s worried about you too, Poe. I mean, we haven't exactly been, like, _gossiping_ about you, but I can sense the worry hanging around her.” 

Poe rubs a hand over his face. “I’ll have to tell her not to worry so much then,” he groans.

“You can, but I doubt it’d do much good,” Finn says, offering Poe a wide smile, the big friendly one that dazzles the women—and men—on-base.

Poe cracks a smile too, a real one, and something warm and runny opens up in Finn’s chest. It flows through him, fizzy and pleasant, and he takes Poe’s hand in his, hoping he can pass off some of this feeling to him. Poe laces his fingers with Finn’s for a moment before pulling his hand free and gesturing to the door.

“Go on. You need your sleep too,” Poe says.

Finn looks at the door, then back at Poe. “I could stay here,” he suggests, shoving his hands—suddenly itching to hold onto something—in his pockets. “If you’re okay with that.”

Poe’s whole body sags at that, all the tension leaking out of him. “I haven’t been able to sleep since I got out of medbay,” he admits, laughing wearily. 

“Might help to have someone you trust with you,” Finn says, offering Poe a more genuine, hopeful smile now. 

Poe returns it, eyes crinkling. “It might,” he says, then the smile fades away, slowly. “But what about Rey?”

“If you want, you guys can work out a schedule between yourselves,” Finn says, smirking, extending an arm to Poe. “Besides, Rey’s been hoarding me the last fews nights. It’s your turn now. She won’t mind.”

“I don’t want to get in the way,” Poe says, glancing at Finn uncertainly, taking a few small steps toward him, then faltering like a powered down droid. “If I caused problems for you, I would never be able—”

“Trust me. It’s okay,” Finn says, opening his hand, holding his palm out. “It’s okay, Poe.”

Something steels Poe’s spine and his reserve, and he accepts Finn’s offered hand. Finn pulls him into a hug, keeps his arms loose around Poe in case he changes his mind. 

Poe doesn't change his mind.

They stay like that, curled into a tight embrace in the middle of Poe’s room—Finn thinks he’ll suggest to Poe that he request a change of quarters tomorrow morning, maybe—until Finn starts yawning and tears prick the corners of his eyes. 

Laughing, Poe slides his fingers through Finn’s and pulls him over to the bed. Together, they clear off the dirty clothes and gear, dumping it all on the floor, and crawl into bed.

After feeling around for a comfortable position, Poe climbs over Finn and fits himself against the curve of Finn’s back.

“Is this okay?” Poe asks.

“Yeah,” Finn says, pressing back a little. Poe’s chest is a solid warmth against his scar, through the thin layer of his t-shirt. 

“Okay. Goodnight, Finn.” Poe drapes an arm over Finn’s waist. “Thank you.”

Finn wraps a hand around Poe’s and pulls it against his chest. “Anytime,” Finn murmurs.

He closes his eyes and drifts off to Poe’s soft, even breaths, drifts off to Poe’s warmth against his back, to Poe’s hand pressing against his thundering heartbeat.

***

Finn comes into wakefulness slowly, like he’s emerging from a bacta tank, disoriented and slippery and shivering cold. The world around him is fuzzy, indistinct. It reminds him a bit of the time he actually came out of a bacta tank, a few weeks after the events on Starkiller Base. 

As he rolls onto his back and stares up at the plain white ceiling, he realizes he’s not sure where he is. He knows that he’s not in his room or Rey’s—then everything floods back, sweeping over him. Finn rolls onto his side to face Poe, who’d ended up curled around a pillow on the far end of his bed during the night.

Poe’s clutching the pillow against his chest, eye squinched shut, curls plastered to his forehead and the sides of his face. He stirs faintly and his eyelids twitch, but his breathing remains slow and even, so Finn lets him be.

The scrapes and cuts and bruises on Poe’s face have faded a bit more, going from a deep burgundy to brown, with a little yellow at the edges. Something that feels an awful lot like relief washes over Finn in a cool wave.

He curls in a little closer, shuts his eyes, and lets his forehead rest lightly against Poe’s. His forehead is damp with a thin sheen of sweat, and their noses bump. Poe hums a little, something lilting and unfamiliar, before moving the pillow aside and pulling Finn closer. Finn pushes his forehead into the side of Poe’s neck and winces when Poe hisses in pain.

“G’morning,” he mumbles, running a hand in gentle circles on Poe’s side. “Sorry about that.”

“ ’s fine,” Poe says, hooking his foot around Finn’s ankle. “How’d you sleep?”

“Good, I guess,” he says. “If I had any dreams, I don’t remember them. How about you?”

“Not great, but better than before,” Poe says, flicking his eyes away from Finn’s face. He rubs his cold foot on Finn’s shin and Finn jerks away.

“You’re an icicle,” Finn mutters accusingly, grabbing Poe’s pillow and swatting him gently on the head with it. 

“And you’re radiating with the heat of a thousand suns,” Poe says, pushing the pillow out of his face. He grins at Finn, a familiar, well-worn, honest mile that makes Finn’s insides twist. “Mind sharing a little of that warmth?”

“Not at all, but c’mere, you’ve gotta…” Finn takes Poe’s hands in his and rubs them. He draws them to his lips and blows across Poe’s raw knuckles.

When he chances a glance back at Poe, Poe’s watching him with an inscrutable look on his face, a faint line forming between his brows. For a moment, Finn panics, wondering if he’s crossed some boundary he shouldn’t have crossed, wonders if he’s upset Poe, brought back bad memories. Finn’s stomach twists, unpleasantly this time, and he pulls away to get out of the bed, put some space between them. Poe reaches out and catches him by the hand before he can.

“It’s good. You’re good,” he says. His voice is soft, almost sweet. His eyes are half-lidded, and his dark lashes fan over his cheeks.

Finn’s insides twist even more.

“Are you sure?” Finn looks down at their hands, uncertainly.

“Yeah.” Poe squeezes on Finn’s hand as if to prove a point. 

“Okay.” Finn settles back down next to Poe and works on smoothing out his heartbeat.

“Thanks.” Poe curls a finger around Finn’s thumb and tugs. “For everything.”

“It’s nothing. I’m just doing what anyone else would do,” Finn protests, wrapping his hands around Poe’s.

“Not just anyone,” Poe says solemnly.

Finn goes silent and still, waits for him to finish that thought, but he doesn't elaborate, so Finn lets it go.

“Rey and I have lessons today,” Finn says, pushing aside a slight twinge of guilt. “Master Luke is arriving tomorrow, and we’ve been putting off our lessons and meditations since we got back and—”

“It’s fine,” Poe says, propping himself up on his elbow and tucking his fist under his chin. “Don’t worry about it.”

Finn chews nervously on his bottom lip. Poe’s eyes flicker, for just a moment. “You’re sure?”

“I’m absolutely sure,” Poe says with a grin.

A few minutes later, Finn manages to drag himself out of bed and down a series of long corridors which lead back to Rey’s room. She’s already wide awake and—unsurprisingly—meditating on a circle-shaped rug in the center of her room.

Finn closes the door noiselessly behind him and leans back against it to watch her. A smooth, polished gray stone floats overhead, wobbling only slightly.

“Good morning,” Finn says, unable to help a slight smirk when the stone drops to the floor with a solid thud.

Rey blinks her eyes open and turns to glare at Finn. “You ruined my concentration,” she huffs, but he can tell he’s not really upset with him. Her scowl softens into a small smile. “How’s Poe doing?”

“All right, I guess,” Finn says, pushing himself away from the door. He ambles over to the bed and throws himself down on it, face first. “I mean, he could just be putting on a brave face, for all I know.”

“True,” Rey allows. He hears the rustle of fabric and raises his head; Rey’s gotten up and she sits herself next to Finn, cross-legged. She touches his back—over the scar—and rubs gently. “Sometimes that’s all one can do. Put on a mask and face the world.”

“He shouldn’t have to,” Finn says, pressing his face into the wrinkled comforter.

“No, he shouldn’t. No one should have to," Rey says, uncoiling beside Finn on the bed. She reaches out to touch his back again. “But we do what we can with what we have. He’s doing his best. As are you. As am I.”

“I wish I could do more.” Finn scoots closer to Rey, until he’s close enough to bury his face in her shoulder.

Finn feels Rey’s arm curl up, around him, hold him close. Her chin digs into the back of his head and it’s an uncomfortable fit, but somehow it makes him feel better.

“I know. So do I.” Rey’s hand moves over his scar in gentle passes, and the knotty feeling in his stomach loosens and falls away completely. “We do what we can.”

“We do,” Finn agrees.

They stay like that, curled around one another, silent but for their breathing, until it’s time for morning lessons.

***

Finn and Rey conduct their morning lessons with Master Luke observing via commlink. He criticizes their form, compliments their concentration, praises them for how far they’ve both advanced in the days the three of them have been apart.

“I’m pleased. Quite pleased,” comes Master Luke’s thin, reedy voice. 

Finn looks over at the tiny holoimage of their teacher and flashes him a thumb’s up sign he knows Master Luke can’t see.

“Thank you, Master Luke,” Rey speaks up from her spot on the carpet next to Finn. She’s still contorted into knots, and sweat runs in rivulets down the sides of her face and onto the floor. “We both miss you very much.”

“Yeah. How long until you get here?” Finn asks, stretching his arms over his head until his back aches.

“I’ll be arriving tonight,” he says. His holoimage flickers slightly, like the wick of a candle. Master Luke’s forehead creases and he tips his head up, as if feeling for a disturbance in the Force. Apparently he finds none, and he settles for smoothing his robes over his legs. “You two possess much anger and hate.”

“What?” Rey topples over and unfolds herself, sitting up slowly. “What do you mean?”

“You’re both in conflict,” Master Luke says. The holoimage flickers out completely, before blinking back into existence. He turns toward Finn, his lined face somber and grave. “Especially you, Finn.”

“I—I’m not! I promise,” Finn insists.

“I can sense the turmoil in you over the commlink,” their teacher says. “Both of you have a capacity for the Light and the Dark. They will call to you. It is your job to listen to the Light. To deny the Dark and lock it away.”

“Of—of course, Master Luke,” Finn stammers. “But I don’t understand—”

“Your unending well of empathy is your greatest gift, Finn, it’s what set you apart from the First Order,” Master Luke continues, “but it can also be your greatest weakness. It can tempt you to the Dark side.”

After they end the communication with perfunctory farewells, Finn sits in the center of the room, on Rey’s carpet, and lets Master Luke’s unsettling words wash over him like a wave. He feels tugged down by gravity, by the weight of his words. And, as much as he wants to deny it, there’s a ring of truth there, too.

He _has_ been angry lately. 

“It’s fine, Finn. He’s just trying to prepare you,” Rey says, attempting to comfort him, but he shakes his head. “I’m sure he doesn't mean you’ll fall.”

“He’s right though. I _have_ been angry,” he admits, cheeks growing hot with shame. He lowers his head, unable to meet Rey’s eye. “I want to find whoever hurt Poe and—and run through them with a lightsaber. Sometimes I dream about it. Sometimes I wake up with the smell of burnt flesh in my nostrils.”

Rey sits next to him in a graceless heap. “That’s okay,” she says, touching his shoulder. “Poe is your friend. Of course you’d want to protect him.”

Finn glances at her, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. “I wish I could understand…”

“What?” she asks.

Anything. Everything. Why Poe? Why here, on the Resistance base? Why not someplace awful, evil, and cruel, like the First Order? Why not to someone awful, evil, and cruel—someone who is _not Poe_. But Finn’s stomach clenches with guilt at those thoughts, so he doesn't let any of them escape the tip of his tongue.

Finn scrubs his hand over his face, settles for: “In the First Order, rape was about the one thing they didn't condone.”

Rey gives him a curious look but stays silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Hux said it was disgusting, beneath us. Shameful acts only lawless Resistance scum partook in,” Finn says, with a rusty laugh. It burns down his throat like the bitter restoratives he had to choke down while he was confined to a cot in the medcenter all those months ago. “I laughed then, too. I thought it was ridiculous. But I guess Hux was right, huh?”

Rey closes a kind hand on his shoulder, very near the thin scar caused by the quillons of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber. It aches now. “Humanoids have a terrible capacity for cruelty and evil,” she says, pausing, swallowing, and then continuing. “As well as an unfathomable capacity for good. Evil and good exist in all of us. Sometimes the evil…”

Finn suddenly feels ill. He thinks Rey can feel it too, because she jerks her hand back and stares at him, eyes wide, mouth falling open in a frightened 'O.'

“I have to go check on Poe,” Finn chokes out.

She simply nods. “I feel it too. Go.”

***

The closer Finn gets to Poe’s room, the longer the corridor feels, as if the duracrete is stretching out underneath his feet, lengthening his journey. A strange sensation drops over him then like a veil, muffling the sound in his ears. The sounds in his mind are all too clear and loud, though. A too familiar metallic hiss whispers through Finn’s mind, digging its claws in, and he instinctively breaks into a run.

Poe’s bedroom door is ajar. Something isn’t right.

Finn throws the door open without knocking, shouting hoarsely, “Poe!”

The window is open, and Poe’s curtains flutter with the breeze.

 _No, no, no_. A terrible, crackling energy burns through Finn like a fire, incinerating everything in its path. He races toward the window despite the overwhelming fear that chokes his breath and wrests it from his lungs.

Finn stumbles over something heavy and solid and he goes sprawling across the carpeted floor, ending up face first in a pile of Poe’s unwashed laundry.

Finn gets slowly onto his hands and knees and looks behind him. 

Poe is curled into a tight, trembling ball, knees drawn to his chest, hands locked around his wrists, knuckles white.

“Poe?” Finn crawls closer, pushing past the twinge in his back and side.

Poe lifts his head from his knee and focuses bleary, red-rimmed eyes on Finn. His cheeks are dry, so Finn doesn't think he’s been crying, but he looks terrible. He looks like he hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in weeks, which Finn realizes is probably not so far off the mark.

“How’d your lessons go?” Poe’s voice is eerily still, quiet, but Finn can sense the tension just below the surface. Poe is putting on appearances for his sake; the knowledge comes like a fist to the stomach.

“Don’t do that,” Finn says, sitting crosslegged beside Poe, who still hasn't uncurled from his tight, protective cocoon. He slides himself a little closer so that their knees bump.

“Do what?” Poe asks, allowing the contact. 

Finn feels stupidly grateful that he doesn't pull away. That he doesn’t push Finn away. 

“Pretending you’re fine, like you’re doing me a favor,” Finn says.

“C’mon, kid, I—”

“I’m not a kid,” Finn says, almost surprising himself with the authority to his tone. He digs his nails in the carpet and twists the soft pile in his fingers. “I’m not fragile.”

“I don’t think you are.” Poe’s whole body shudders as he sighs, like the foundation of a condemned building that’s about to come down. “I _know_ you’re not, Finn. I’ve seen firsthand how brave and strong you are.”

“So why are you tiptoeing around me? I thought we already talked about this,” Finn says.

Poe ducks his head and rips his hands through his damp hair. Finn reaches up and pries his fingers open, gently.

“I told you before. You’ve got more than enough on your plate,” Poe says, letting Finn keep hold of his shaking hand. “I’ve got to try and get through this on my own.”

Finn lets go of Poe’s hands and sits back with a frustrated, huffy sigh. “You’ve already made up your mind?” he asks, not bothering to try and conceal his anger. “You decided you don’t want my help—”

Poe’s head jerks up and he stares at Finn, wide-eyed and frightened. “It’s not that I don’t want your help. It’s—”

“You’re too proud to ask? Do you not trust me?” Finn suggests. 

“No!” 

“Well, what is it then?”

Poe rubs his fists into his eyes and groans. “Have you spoken to a psytech since you’ve been on-base?” he asks.

Finn frowns. “Yeah, once, after I got out of the medcenter,” he says, shrugging. The thin material of his shirt scratches across the sensitive scar in his side and the tender, jagged stripe on his back that still aches when a rainstorm’s coming. Inexplicably, it’s aching now. “Why?”

“Why? I—I— _kriff_ , Finn. You spent most of your life being brainwashed by maniacs,” Poe says, squeezing his hands on his thighs like he's trying to keep from reaching out for Finn. 

“Are you afraid I might fall back on the Bantha fodder they put in my head?” Finn’s stomach does some unpleasant aerobatics at the unspoken implications. “I promise you, I’m dedicated to the Resistance. I am a _member_ of the Resistance. Okay? I can officially renounce the First Order over the public comm system, if you want me to.” 

Poe sighs wearily. “That’s not… That’s not what I meant. What I mean is,” he pauses, taking a deep, ragged breath. “You need to focus on yourself. Take care of yourself. You can’t be worrying about me.”

“I told you—”

“I know,” Poe says, gentling his tone, but that only chafes at Finn and digs under his skin like droid pincers. “I know, Finn. But I’m a mess, and I don’t want—I _can’t_ put this on you. I’m sorry.”

“ _Poe_ ,” Finn tries, but Poe gets to his feet slowly and offers Finn his hand. He looks at it, contemplating, and then gets up on his own. He stares at Poe, forces him to meet his eyes. 

“Finn—”

His name feels like a slap to the face now, and Finn goes warm all over, shaky, nauseated. Bile burns its way up his throat. 

He wishes he could just understand. He _wants_ to understand.

“It was such a big deal for me to get out from under the First Order’s control. To be able to make choices for myself. Why are you taking this choice away from me? I choose this. I _choose_ you—” Finn moves forward, but the utterly devastated look in Poe’s eyes gives him cause to fall silent and go still.

“Don’t. Don’t say that.” Poe shakes his head, as if trying to shake Finn’s—admittedly hasty, maybe even foolish but no less untrue—admission out of his head. “There are some choices you don't get to make.”

“The Resistance was supposed to be a place where I could decide for myself what path I wanted to take,” Finn protests, battling the tightening in his throat and the inexplicable burning in his eyes. He balls his hands into fists and gamely fights the feeling off. “The Resistance is supposed to be _safe_. This wasn't supposed to happen here. This isn’t how it’s supposed to—”

Poe lurches forward and touches Finn lightly on the arm. “Finn. Finn, buddy, I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing his thumb in slow circles over the inside of Finn’s elbow.

“Master Luke told Rey and me over the comms this morning that we both have capacity for the Light and the Dark,” Finn mumbles, leaning forward and pressing his cheek against Poe’s neck. “ ‘You two have much anger and hate in you,’ he said. It’s our job to harness it and lock it away in a box in our minds or something. To live in the Light, and never give into Darkness.”

“Yeah?” Poe starts rubbing up and down Finn’s back in long, slow, soothing strokes.

“I—I don’t know. It was easier believing I was pure Light,” he says, wrapping his arms around Poe’s waist. “It was easier not knowing.”

“It doesn't mean that… you’re not good,” Poe says, sounding uncertain. Poe’s long fingers trail up the back of Finn’s neck to move through his hair. “It doesn’t mean… You _are_ , Finn. You are.”

“Sometimes I miss the black-and-white of the First Order,” Finn says, with a sigh. “Things were either good or bad. Right or wrong. There were no shades of gray. Good things didn’t happen to bad people. And good people were never hurt when they were supposed to feel safe and loved and protected.”

Finn feels Poe take deep breaths, chest rising and falling against his own. The steady rise-fall-rise of Poe’s chest against his makes him feel a little better. Helps anchor his unsteady heartbeat. 

“Sometimes I feel like this is one long nightmare, and then I’ll wake up and it’ll all just be gone. Everything will be back to normal,” Poe says, his breath rushing against Finn’s neck and earlobe in a warm tickle. “I know it’s not, that it won’t be. But sometimes that makes it easier to just… wake up and deal with the day. I’m not sure it’s the best way to cope.”

Finn doesn’t know why Poe’s telling him this now, but he holds himself very still in Poe’s arms. He doesn't want to upset the balance, to startle Poe into silence. He wants Poe to be able to trust him enough to tell him what’s inside his heart and mind. Wants Poe to let him help, as Poe helped him.

“I wish you’d let me help you,” Finn says.

“I wish I could. You don't know how badly I do.” Poe’s fingers burn on the back of Finn’s neck. His palm is a brand on his back, over the scar. “I don’t know what I’d do if I hurt you.”

“You could never hurt me.” 

It almost feels wrong to say that, but at the same time, right. It feels like both, in equal measure. It feels true.

“I could, without meaning to. Without even trying,” Poe says. “If you committed yourself to helping me… And then you got hurt because something brought back memories of your time with the Order, I would never be able to forgive myself.”

Finn pulls back until he’s holding Poe at arm’s length, hands loose around his upper arms. Poe’s eyes are still red, but he’s gotten some of his color back. One single curl of hair hangs over his forehead and Finn runs his thumb over it, tucking it back into place. Poe’s eyes close, and his lashes brush against Finn’s wrist.

“I could never blame you.” Finn stares at his eyelashes as they fan over his cheeks. “I would know it wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s not the point.” Poe turns his head and Finn ends up awkwardly caressing his cheek. 

Finn cups his hand over Poe’s cheek and turns his head back, so that they’re face-to-face again. “I know. I know, and you don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’ll always worry.” Poe opens his eyes and flashes Finn a shallow smirk. “You take care of yourself first. And then you can start to _think_ about worrying about me, okay?”

Finn has a feeling Poe isn't going to budge on this point, so he concedes.

He drops his gaze. Leaves his hand curved against Poe’s cheek for a moment before slipping it away. “Okay.”

***

Since Finn has been denied the role of caretaker, he decides he’ll do a little bit of reconnaissance instead. And who better to turn to than Snap Wexley? Finn’s only been with the Resistance for a few months, but he’s heard enough tales of Snap’s unparalleled skills as a recon pilot to think that he might actually be able to help him.

When Finn seeks him out in the hangar, Snap greets him with a wave of the hand and a broad, friendly smile. They've barely spoken more than five full sentences to one another, but Snap acts like they've known each other for years.

“Hey, Finn. What can I do for you?” Snap climbs up a ladder, a bucket of what looks like wrenches and screwdrivers hanging over his arm. He has a long twisted screw poking out from the corner of his mouth.

“Were you on-base when Poe was attacked?” Finn asks, cutting right to the quick. Best to be blunt, straightforward and get it all out in the open.

Snap drops the bucket to the duracrete with a loud, metallic clang. Finn glances about, nervously, as some of the other pilots look over with curious looks.

“What?” Snap asks.

“Were you on-base when—”

“No,” he says, trundling down the ladder and landing on the ground with a little hop. He puts his hands on his hips and gives Finn a somewhat calculating look. “What I mean is… Why are you asking about that, kid?”

Finn bristles, but doesn’t bother to correct him. Not now, at least. Rather, Finn strides forward, slings an arm around Snap’s shoulders, and fixes his face in what he hopes is a winning grin. “I’m doing some…reconnaissance. Thought I’d come to the best recon pilot in the Resistance.”

Snap’s heavy brow furrows. “Did Poe put you up to this?” he asks.

“Poe has no idea I’m here,” Finn admits, before he can think better of it. 

Blast it. Maybe Snap won’t help him now that he knows Poe doesn’t have any idea Finn is here, asking around. He tightens his arm around Snap’s shoulders and grins so hard his face hurts.

“Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you anything without Poe’s permission,” Snap says, and Finn can practically hear the unspoken _… but_ hanging suspended between them. “But I was here. Most of the other pilots were out on a practice run, but Poe and I were both grounded ’cause our starfighters needed maintenance.”

Finn nods, gives Snap a gentle nudge to continue. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah… But I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” Snap says, pulling away and crouching down to pick up his overturned bucket and scattered tools. “You really should talk to Poe about this. It’s not my place.”

Finn reaches out with the Force, tracing along the tendrils of memory in Snap’s mind before recoiling. A Jedi should never go into the mind of another without permission and here Finn’s done it twice. Snap gives no indication anything’s amiss, but Finn still feels ill at ease. Maybe this is the Dark in him that Luke was talking about earlier that morning.

“Thanks for your help, Snap,” Finn says—trying to ignore how his voice trembles, just a little bit—and he hurries off.

***

Finn’s doing some exercises in his room later in the day when his door slides open and Poe strides in, the top half of his orange flightsuit flapping at his waist. He looks good, solid, better than he has in weeks, like he’s been eating better lately. Dark circles aren’t smudged under his eyes any longer, and the bruises and cuts have healed, leaving behind barely noticeable scars.

Finn sits up and folds his legs under his body and greets Poe with a grin. “Poe, hey, what—”

“You talked to Snap,” Poe says, sounding breathless and pinched, like all the air’s been drained out of the room.

Finn startles and leaps to his feet, wiping his damp palms off on his exercise pants. “What do you mean? I don’t—”

“Snap told me, Finn,” Poe continues, waving a hand toward the door’s motion sensors to shut it. He sweeps his hands through his hair. “I thought we settled this. Didn’t we agree that you’d let it go?”

Finn steps forward, extending a hand. “I can accept you don’t want my help, you don’t wanna lean on me, but I’m not gonna stop asking questions. I’m not gonna stop trying to—”

Poe pulls away from Finn’s outstretched hand, eyes sparking. “You went over my head. You had no right. I don’t _want_ you asking questions, Finn. I don’t want you digging into this. It’s done. It’s settled. _Leave it alone_.”

“Why? Why not?” Finn challenges, reaching for Poe’s retreating hand. 

“Because! Isn’t that enough?” Poe asks, tucking his hands in the pockets of his flightsuit.

“I—I guess,” Finn says, “but I just… I wish you wouldn’t try to push me away.”

Poe turns on his heel and paces over to the lone window in Finn’s room. 

Finn has a full, unobstructed view of the pilots’ hangars. Sometimes he sits at the window and sketches pictures of the X-Wings on his datapad. Sometimes he studies the pilots rushing back and forth, helmets tucked under their arms, and tries to pick out Poe by the wave of his hair or the slope of his nose. Usually, he picks Poe out of the crowd by the little orange-and-white astromech that trails after him like a puppy.

He watches Poe’s back muscles shift under the thin cotton of his t-shirt. He can see a smattering of dull, faded, fingerprint-shaped bruises peeking out from under the sleeve of Poe’s shirt, where someone must have gripped him roughly by the arm. 

Poe rests his hands on the windowsill and sighs heavily.

Finn just stands there and watches Poe’s back, silent, waiting. Waiting for a sign, something, anything.

“What do you want to know?” Poe asks finally. His voice, raw and rough-hewn, trembles ever so slightly.

“Whatever you want to tell me,” Finn says, approaching him with small, careful steps. He joins him by the window, letting his shoulder press gently into Poe’s.

Poe lets out his breath on a shaky exhale and rests his forehead against his knuckles for a moment. “I knew him from the Republic. We were in the starfleet program together,” he says quietly. Finn leans into Poe’s shoulder just a little. “He came to the base as part of a Republic envoy. We ran into each other, decided to catch up over some drinks.”

“Poe, I’m sorry…” Finn touches Poe’s shoulder tentatively.

Poe squeezes his eyes shut and rubs a hand over his face. He drops his hand and gazes out the window unseeingly, his eyes glassy. “I never considered him a friend, but he was someone I knew. Someone who was on our side.”

They both go still and silent, and Finn turns those words—those thoughts—over and over in his mind. Someone Poe knew—someone he trusted—had raped him. In a place where he should have felt safe, protected. Finn pushes down a wave of nausea.

“Is he—did they—” Finn stammers.

“He got off-planet before he could be brought in,” Poe says, pushing away from the window. He bangs a fist against the sill, a solid metallic thump. He’s all hard lines, unsmiling and grim, his eyes blank and glassy.

A band clamps around Finn’s chest and tightens painfully. 

“I can find him. I’ll bring him back,” Finn vows, fiercely, grabbing Poe’s arm. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.”

Poe jerks away and tugs his flightsuit on. “No, Finn. The General has some people looking into it. But the Resistance has other priorities at the moment. Like a galactic civil war,” Poe quips, tugging at the zipper on his suit. His tone is acidic, incongruous with the flimsy smile on his face.

“Protecting their soldiers, their pilots should be their top priority,” Finn insists.

“That’s not how war works.” Poe looks at him, his sharp, hard lines and edges softening. His dark eyes are like magnets that draw Finn’s gaze. “I appreciate it, Finn. Believe me.”

“I wish I’d been here,” Finn says.

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.” Poe looks down. “You were where you were supposed to be.”

“Maybe if I’d been _here_ , you wouldn’t have had to deal with this alone.”

“You’re here now.” Poe pauses, then holds a hand out to Finn. 

Finn wraps his hand around Poe’s, squeezes tightly. “I am.”

***

Finn bunks with Poe again that night. They’ve been sharing a bed more and more, lately. Sometimes it’s Finn who wakes up in a cold sweat, shaking, brushing away the cobwebs of a half-remembered nightmare. And other times, it’s Poe, jerking himself out of sleep with a hoarse, strangled cry. Sometimes Poe wakes with his attacker’s name on his lips. Sometimes he clings to the front of Finn’s shirt and trembles against his chest until his breaths even out and he’s asleep again.

On this night, Finn slips up. He makes a mistake.

He lets himself into Poe’s dreams.

It happens, Master Luke had told him, when a Jedi-in-training hasn’t sharpened their telepathic skills. 

Telepathy isn’t something Finn had ever been interested in, so he focused on other areas of study, like lightsaber training and physical combat. Moving objects with his mind, stacking stones and levitating them in the air. 

Finn walks down a long, darkened corridor that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. It’s steeped in shadows that skitter away like frightened animals the closer he gets to the end of the hall. 

There’s a single door at the end, a slash of pale yellow light at the bottom. He can sense someone on the other side, though he can’t quite see them. Their presence is heavy and dark, like a cloud of black smoke.

When he lifts his hand to open the door, he realizes he’s in Poe’s head, in Poe’s dreams. 

Smoke billows through the crack between the door and the floor, winds around Finn’s arms and legs and binds him in place. Finn tries to open his mouth, tries to yell, but his mouth isn’t moving. Something’s gotten disconnected between his brain and his tongue and his mouth, and the signals aren’t getting through.

He twists and contorts, trying to free his arms and legs, but the bindings only grow tighter. Breathing grows more and more difficult, and he isn’t sure if it’s from the thick smoke in the air—is something on fire?—or because his own body has become his greatest enemy and he’s panicking.

Then someone grabs Finn about the shoulders and thrusts him out of Poe’s dream.

Finn jerks awake with a scream tearing out of his aching throat. A light snaps on and then Poe’s hand is on his chest, guiding him gently back against the pillows.

“I felt you in my head,” Poe says, settling next to Finn and folding his hands over his chest. “I threw you out.”

Finn rolls onto his side. Poe slides him a sideward glance out of the corner of his eye. “I didn’t mean to. I slipped up.”

“I know.” Poe rolls too, until they're eye to eye. “My head’s not a great place to be. Especially not at night.”

“Do you dream like this every night?” Finn asks, his tone hushed.

“Not all the time. Sometimes I have good dreams. You’re usually in them,” Poe admits. “Sometimes Rey, and even Luke.”

Finn scoots a little closer to Poe and lets his head drop onto his shoulder. “Do you talk to a psytech about this stuff?”

“When I have a little downtime, I guess,” Poe says, taking Finn’s hands in his. “Most of my time’s been getting eaten up by X-Wing maintenance, lately.” He pauses, and Finn can hear the thoughts churning in his brain. He waits for Poe to continue, and then he does: “What about you? Have you gone back?”

“Not yet,” Finn says. He tries for a casual shrug, which is kind of hard to do when you’re lying in bed. He settles for vaguely gesturing with his hands. “I just had that one evaluation.” 

“Are you afraid to?” Poe asks.

The Resistance base’s psytech is a pleasant, older woman with a soft touch named Mirella. She looks like she could be someone’s grandmother, with her cloud of puffy white hair and a dark brown face lined with age. When Finn met with her just that once, she immediately put him at ease. He knew he didn’t need to be afraid of her, that he could trust her. 

With the First Order, it had been far, far different. His FN unit had its own psytech, but she was nothing at all like Mirella. She was trained to look for weakness and expose it. 

Thinking about _her_ makes his stomach turn, so he pushes those thoughts aside.

Finn rolls the word _afraid_ in his mind like a heavy stone up the side of a hill. 

“I don’t know if I’m _afraid_ ,” he says, pulling Poe’s hand against his chest. “Maybe? I guess I didn’t really think about it. We—my FN unit, we got good at compartmentalizing. Burying things. Maybe it’s all still in here somewhere.” Finn taps a finger to his temple. 

Poe shifts closer, until Finn can feel his breath skimming across his cheek and the strip of exposed skin where his night shirt has slipped down. 

“We could both go,” Poe says. 

“Together?” Finn looks down at the back of Poe’s hand. He doesn’t think he wants Poe to hear about all the things he had to do as a stormtrooper. He doesn’t want Poe to look at him any differently. 

“Only if you wanted to,” Poe says softly. “I was thinking more like… On our own. Just to talk some of this stuff out with someone. Someone you’re not really connected to, personally.” 

Finn nods slowly. He thinks about the box in the back of his mind, where Master Luke had told him to lock away the Dark. 

_“It could help,” he says._

Poe doesn’t respond. Finn can feel him thinking though, working through something like picking apart knots in a tangle of rope. 

He waits. 

Finally: “I was trying to push you away. Not because I didn’t trust you. I didn’t want— _don’t_ want to hurt you. To remind you of what you tried to run away from.” 

“I kind of figured that out,” Finn says, pressing his cheek against the top of Poe’s head. He folds an arm around Poe’s shoulders. “It’s usually totally random stuff that reminds me of the First Order. Like the way the service droid folds the towels in the ’fresher. Sometimes it’s just hearing the scrape of durasteel on duracrete. Or the sound a blaster makes when it’s being disassembled.” 

Poe drapes an arm over his chest. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. Stuff you wouldn’t normally think about. It’s kind of why I left with Rey for a while,” Finn admits. “I knew the Resistance was eyeing me for an infantryman, which is basically what I was in the Order. And I didn’t want to do that. So when Master Luke offered to train me alongside Rey, I jumped at the chance.” 

“I didn’t know that,” Poe says, and Finn can feel a twinge of guilt coming from him. It aches like a phantom limb, then fades. 

“I didn’t tell anybody the real reason I left. I didn’t even tell Rey,” Finn says. “I think Master Luke had me all figured out a day into training, though.” 

“I’m honored you’re telling me this now,” Poe says, sounding solemn and not at all like his usual self. 

“It’s only fair.” Finn rubs in slow circles on Poe’s back. Poe’s hands are doing the same on Finn’s back, over his scar in gentle, soothing passes. 

“What a pair we are.” Poe presses a muffled laugh against Finn’s shoulder. 

Finn doesn’t think it’s quite _that_ funny, but he finds himself laughing too. Poe lifts his head from Finn’s shoulder, smiling a real smile that reaches his eyes. Finn feels a smile forming on his own face, then Poe’s hand on his cheek. 

The nightmare—Poe’s nightmare—is a whisper at the edges of his consciousness now. He can hardly remember what it was that had scared him so much. Poe’s hand is still on Finn’s cheek, heavy and warm and steady. 

“Finn?” Poe asks. 

“Yeah?” Finn makes a valiant attempt to button down the laughter threatening to spill out of him. 

“Can I—can I kiss you?” Poe’s thumb strokes against his cheek. 

“Of course you can.” Finn swallows down all his laughter. He can feel his joy flowing into the locked box in his mind, burning up the Dark. 

Poe leans forward and brushes his lips against Finn’s. 

Finn’s kissed people before. Plenty of them. Other ’troopers, mostly, in the barracks after lights-out. There wasn’t anything romantic or gentle or kind about it. It was just sometimes they needed an outlet. It was just sometimes they woke up achingly hard, or desperate for touch. Those kisses usually involved more teeth and tongue and saliva, though. 

The First Order chose to look away as long as it didn’t lead to undesirable emotions, like caring, like empathy, like love. 

This is nice, though. Finn likes this. He could spend the rest of his life doing this. Just kissing whomever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants. 

Just kissing Poe. 

Poe sips at his lips like he’s trying to drink Finn up, one of his hands sliding down to cup Finn’s elbow with loose fingers. 

He breaks the kiss to hold Finn at arm’s length, his lips slick and slightly pink. 

Finn feels dizzy, and he isn’t sure how much of it is him and how much of it is him absorbing Poe’s emotions like a sponge. 

“Was that okay?” Poe asks. 

“It was more than okay. It was great.” Finn leans in to catch his lips with his own, but Poe holds him back with a hand against his chest. 

For a moment, he worries, and fear clutches at his heart. 

“You’re good,” Poe says, and the grip loosens in Finn’s chest. “I just wanted to—to thank you.” 

“For what?” Finn asks. 

“Everything. For everything. You’ve been such a good friend to me though all of this, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you exactly how much that means to me.” Poe looks down, hair flopping into his face. 

“Well,” Finn says, reaching out to tip Poe’s chin up so he can kiss him again. “This is a good start.” 

Poe kisses him back, a hand sliding to the back of his neck. “It is.” 

*** 

Finn’s sitting with Rey in the little garden just beyond the barracks. It’s not much of a garden really, just a few plots of earth, some patches of newly planted grass, and a shining plaque bearing the names of those lost in the battle on Starkiller. Finn and Rey sometimes come to this place for their meditation exercises, when it’s nice enough outside. Today is one of those days. 

Finn watches birds flit from treetop to treetop, their wings a dark blur. He can hear the rush of water, too. 

Rey sits across from him, crosslegged, hands resting loosely over her knees. Her hair is loose, just long enough to brush her shoulders, a faint breeze blowing stray wispy strands into her eyes. She squints, tilts her face up at the overcast sky, and frowns. 

“What is it?” Finn asks, pulling his legs underneath his body. He tugs at some blades of grass, pulls them free and tosses them in the air. Lets his mind wrap around them and tangle them in Rey’s disheveled hair. 

She lets out an exasperated sigh and reaches up to slap the grass away. “Nothing. I just thought it would be a nicer day. I miss the sun, is all,” she says. 

“You seem distracted,” Finn comments, pulling his knees to his chest. “I can hear your thoughts.” 

Rey looks up at him through her eyelashes, and he can practically hear the gears of her mind creaking and turning as she thinks carefully over what she’s about to say. 

Finally: “I eavesdropped on General Organa and Master Luke. Accidentally, of course. They were talking about—about Poe. The man who—” Rey’s voice falters, for just a moment. “The man who raped him. I didn’t mean to, but I think the general’s strong emotions left her guard down and I ended up seeing him in her mind.” 

Finn clenches his hands into fists in the cool grass. “What about him?” he asks, stiffly. 

“I could find him, I think,” she says, leaning in. “The Resistance can’t afford to do anything to risk their standing the Republic. They won’t pursue justice against a member of the Republic’s Starfleet. But you and I could—” 

“Wait. What are you suggesting?” Finn interrupts. 

“I can find him. I just need to talk with Poe, search his memories. If I could find a strong enough memory, I could tap into his attacker’s life-force. I could—” 

“We can’t ask him to do that,” Finn protests, even as the desire for revenge tugs and plucks at the back of his mind. 

“What’s the harm in just asking? If he says no, we can let it go. We can find another way,” Rey says. “But if he agrees to it and I could find something we can use… We could find his rapist. If we took him to neutral space the Republic wouldn’t be able to intervene…” 

Finn sighs and rubs his hands over his face. He wants to agree to this. Stars and planets, how he wants to agree. 

“You know what Kylo Ren did to him. He did the same to you,” Finn says, dropping his hands. He reaches for her and and she lets him link their fingers. “I know he’d let you because he trusts you, but what if you went into his mind and he was forced to relive those memories?” 

Rey frowns as she considers that. “Master Luke would probably say revenge is but one of many paths that lead to the Dark side,” she mutters unhappily, squeezing on Finn’s hand. 

“We’ll just have to find another way to help Poe,” Finn says. 

“You don’t suppose Poe has any Force-sensitivity, do you?” Rey asks, slipping her hand from Finn’s. 

“I don’t think so. Why?” he asks. 

Rey pushes herself to her feet and offers Finn a helping hand. “He might really get something out of Master Luke’s meditation techniques,” she says, hauling Finn to his feet. Rey turns and regards Finn with an intense gaze that reminds him a bit of the spotlights that used to scan the night skies on Starkiller, searching for enemy ships. “How about you?” 

“What about me?” Finn asks, ducking his head and dodging her penetrating gaze. 

“How are you dealing with—with everything?” She asks, linking her arm with his as they start in the direction of the barracks. 

“Okay, I guess,” he says. “Poe thinks I should talk to the on-base psytech. About my trauma.” He throws an exaggerated face at Rey, in the hopes of making her laugh. 

Rey just chuffs lightly. “He’s not wrong,” she says, offering him a small, kind smile that stirs something somewhere in his chest. 

“I guess I don’t really see it as trauma,” he protests, as they approach the main barracks, where the pilots bunk. “It was awful, but… I survived. I did what I had to to survive. And when found my opening to escape, I grabbed it with both hands.” 

“Well,” Rey says, resting her cheek on his shoulder and squeezing his arm. “You’re more resilient than most, my friend. But I didn’t mean only that. You’ve gone through so much in such a short span of time. I know you want to help Poe, but I hope you don’t lose yourself in the process.” 

Finn pauses in front of the doors that lead to the pilots' barracks and looks down at Rey. She looks up at him and meets his eyes, almost defiantly. 

“I’m not going to lose myself. I promise,” he says very seriously, taking her gently by the shoulders. “It’s not always easy. Sometimes I find myself falling back on old habits. Or I’ll do something the First Order would’ve punished me for and I just sit there waiting for the spinning red lights and the alarms that never come. But… I’m just trying to do the best I can, you know? It’ll get better. Easier. I _know_ it will. It’s just gonna take time.” 

Rey smiles up at Finn and stands on the tips of her toes to kiss him on the forehead. Her lips are soft and cool. Finn wonders if she can see into his mind at this very moment—a skill he hasn’t quite grasped hold of yet. “I have all the faith in the world,” she says, stepping back. “In you. And in Poe.” 

“What’s this about Poe?" 

They both look up; Poe is leaning in the doorway, watching them with a tiny half-smile curving up the corner of his mouth. 

“We were just talking about you,” Rey teases, moving away from Finn, as if to give them some privacy. “I’ve got to see Master Luke. You two stay out of trouble while I’m gone.” 

Finn doesn’t miss Rey giving Poe’s shoulder a gentle squeeze as she passes by him for the door. Poe reaches up and returns the gesture, and then she’s gone in a flutter of long, gray Jedi robes. 

Poe pushes himself away from the door and wanders over to Finn’s side. 

“Did you hear our whole conversation?” Finn asks. 

“Just a little bit,” Poe says conversationally, leaning into Finn’s shoulder. “Had my first meeting with the psytech, Mirella, today. Went about as well as you can imagine. Which is, to say, not very well at all. But it’s a start.” 

“One step at a time,” Finn says, as he loops an arm around Poe’s waist and the two of them head inside. 

“One step at a time,” Poe echoes, reaching into the pocket of his olive-green trousers to produce a shiny plasteel card. “What about you? You decided whether or not you’re gonna start meeting with the psytech?” 

“I think I will,” Finn say slowly, as if trying the words on like a new leather jacket. 

They pause in front of the door to Poe’s room and Finn waits while Poe slides the plasteel card through the reader. It beeps approvingly and the door slides open. Poe’s slipping off his jacket before the door’s even shut, draping it over the post of his new bed and reaching up to loosen his collar. 

Finn pauses and looks around, scanning the room, when he notices the second bed and the little brown trunk at the end. 

“What’s this?” he asks, going over to it and putting a hand on top of the sleek wooden trunk. 

“Well, uh, I requisitioned a spare bed. For you. In case you wanted to stick around,” Poe says, not meeting Finn’s eyes. He kicks off his boots and sits on the end of his bed to roll off his socks. “I don’t expect you to, like, share my bed every time you come by, you know? And this way you could have a place of your own to just crash at if you needed. This is for you.” Poe picks up the plasteel card and holds it out to Finn. 

Finn walks over to Poe and reaches out, plucking the card from between his fingers and pocketing it. Poe still isn’t quite looking him in the eye, and his cheeks are slightly pink. 

Finn looks back at the bed and the wooden trunk. An inexplicable warmth starts in his chest and flows through him, from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. Finn doesn’t think it’s the Force, though. It's an emotion. A feeling. 

“Poe,” he says, and Poe does look up at him then. “Thank you.” 

Poe offers him a nervous smile. “I wasn’t sure if it would be weird or not, but Jess and Rey both said—” 

“Rey knew about this?” Finn can’t help but be impressed that she’d managed to keep this a secret from him. There’s a lot he has left to learn, Finn muses. “Poe, can I kiss you?” 

“Hell yes you can,” Poe says, grinning brilliantly up at Finn. 

Finn leans down, tips Poe’s chin up with a finger, and kisses him. He slides his mouth over Poe’s until their lips slot together perfectly, and Poe’s fingers hook in the sash of Finn’s robe. After a few long moments, Finn leans back, parting their lips, and holds Poe at arm’s length. 

“I really appreciate you doing this for me,” Finn says, letting a hand come to rest in Poe’s hair. He loosely tangles his fingers in the curls. 

“But…?” Poe prompts. Finn detects just the slightest flicker of worry behind his eyes. 

“But I don’t think I’m gonna need to use the extra bed all that much. If it’s okay with you,” Finn says, with a slight smirk. 

“More than okay.” Poe pulls him in for another kiss before letting go. He smoothes a hand down Finn’s back. “I’m so hungry I could eat a womp-rat. How about we grab Rey and go down to mess for lunch? Maybe we can take our trays outside. Eat in the garden or something.” 

Finn and his two favorite people, having lunch together in the garden? He can’t think of anything better than that. 

Finn breaks into a grin, laces his fingers with Poe’s and pulls him out the door to go find Rey. 


End file.
